Tuesday, 27 March 2012

The 2kDozen 500: #119 - Madonna, "MDNA"

I'm listening deep in the belly of the Beast here. I'm going have to do twelve Hail Marys and three hours of "Loveless" to restore my soul to its proper level of righteousness. *Shudder*

Hee hee! MDNA - I think I see what she did there. Like the drugs, yeah? The opening track starts with a prayer and she sounds proper old in the voice. Then it goes a bit more Radio One - both "hypnotic" and "erotic" and rhyming "fire" and "desire". She has decided to call the second track "Gang Bang", which just oozes class, and it just lumps along with a sub-DJ Oetzi bassline, a squirt of dubstep and shitty Euro keys. "If you're gonna act like a bitch/Then you gonna die like a bitch" - what the fuck are you on about?

"I'm Addicted" is very tired lyrically, but things pick up musically - fairground techno. Depeche Mode on the waltzers. Though Madge being Madge she has to hammer away at the MDMA/MDNA metaphor. "Turn Up The Radio" sounds a pretty naked attempt to get radio play. It has a Chris Moyles lurch to it and moths attracted to flames. (Sheesh!)

The problem I have with Madge is that she is so empty. Blonde Ambition was about the sum of it all at her highest point. Everything else is subservient to the ambition. She has nothing else to say. That's why having MIA drafted in for your Superbowl tune "Give Me All Your Luvin'" is all the more depressing. For all the accusations of empty-hearted appropriation of Sri Lankan politics for her own artgonk ends, she is at least saying a bit of something about something, eh? And yet Madge expects MIA to give her all her loving and that. Nicky Minaj is maybe nearer the Ciccone highwater mark of the busty, crucifixed mid-Eighties.

Some auld Madonna titles turn up in the lyrics as well - "Lucky Star", "Into The Groove" and "Like A Virgin". Like when Alan Shearer was getting interviewed for the World Cup in 1998. It's all about Madonna. Even when she's singing about her "Superstar", I'm pretty sure she's singing into a mirror. Musically, it's celery, no nutritional value whatsoever. "I'm A Sinner/I like it that way" - yes, yes. You've mentioned that once or twice. Then an actual litany of saints!

"Love Spent" - "Hold me like your money/Tell you that you want me". Faceplam! The tune is perhaps the best bit of the album, a mangled up and distended version of Rent by Pet Shop Boys - with banjo and a touch of 8-bit. Then there's some reductive logic "If you were the Mona Lisa/You would hang in the Louvre" and more weeeeaaakkkkk aaaarrrssseeee comparison of a loved one and a "Masterpiece".

I can't believe she can still do this for a living. Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.